News of the Profession

National Trust Launches Online Resource
The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently launched Preservation Atlas, a new online database of Trust activities throughout the United States. This easy-to-use online tool allows users to search a database of thousands of National Trust offerings including historic sites, America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, Dozen Distinctive Destinations, Historic Hotels of America, preservation grants, and Main Street and Legal Defense Fund activities. The Atlas utilizes cartographic software that enables users to locate these ongoing preservation projects anywhere in the country by simply entering a location or specific Trust activity, project, or site. The map not only displays the locations of historic sites, it also provides detailed information about each project. Additionally, visitors interested in becoming involved in the preservation movement can obtain the contact information for their local preservation offices. “This innovative online tool provides the public with a one-stop shop that showcases all Trust projects, big and small,” noted Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “By making this information easily accessible to the public, we hope to increase grassroots involvement in the growing historic preservation movement.” For more information, visit <http://www.nationaltrust.org/>.

Clinton Presidential Library Opens
On November 18, 2004, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library was dedicated on the south bank of the Arkansas River. In attendance were representatives from both the Republican and Democratic parties, former President Clinton and his wife Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, President George Bush, former Presidents Bush and Carter, and other dignitaries. The Little Rock facility houses the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, the Clinton School of Public Service, and the Clinton Foundation offices. The Clinton presidential center will be the twelfth presidential library built in the United States. The $165 million price tag will make this thirty-acre center the largest and most expensive presidential library constructed to date. The library contains eight C-5 cargo planes worth of presidential materials including nearly 2 million photographs, 80 million pages of records and documents, 75,000 gifts and artifacts, and 21 million email messages. The archive is the repository of the written, video and audio records of the Clinton-Gore Administration, and beginning in 2005 will be available to historians, students and others with an interest in researching the Clinton presidency. The center has a full-time educator on staff who will regularly host school groups for onsite lessons.

James Polshek, a New York architect, created the unique building design which is meant to resemble a glass bridge to the twenty-first century, and Ralph Appelbaum Associates designed the exhibits. The 20,000 square-foot museum contains thematic alcoves depicting important milestones in the Clinton presidency, such as the economic boom and elimination of the deficit, reducing crime and promoting peace and democracy in the world. It features a multimedia timeline of world events between 1993 and 2001, interactive flat-screen displays and a whirl of high-tech gadgets, a full-scale replica of the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office, and several exhibits that detail life in the White House, including “State Events,” “Welcoming the World,” and “Making The House a Home.”

The library is equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including high-definition television screens and nineteen interactive stations. Visitors can enter any date during the entire Clinton presidency and see the president’s complete schedule for that day. They can also sit in chairs

around the cabinet room table and view information about each cabinet department on monitors built into the tabletop. For more information on the Clinton Presidential Center visit: <http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org/>.

Controversial “Price of Freedom” Exhibit Opens at the Smithsonian
On Veteran’s Day, “The Price of Freedom: Americans at War,” the National Museum of American History’s (NMAH) new permanent exhibit, opened to the public amid some controversy in Washington, DC. The 18,200 square-foot exhibit provides a compelling look at United States military conflicts and their impact on American society from the 1750s to the twenty-first century. Using historical objects and documents, video and audio presentations, interactive displays, and original artwork the exhibition chronologically takes visitors through the story of how wars have shaped United States history and affected the lives of all Americans. According to Brent Glass, director of the museum, the goal of this new exhibit is to help visitors “experience the impact of war on citizen soldiers . . .  as well as on their families and communities.”

This exhibit features more than 850 objects and covers 16 conflicts, with special emphasis on the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, and Vietnam. Military enthusiasts will enjoy the vast array of weaponry&emdash;from large-caliber eighteenth-century muskets to 60 mm mortars and flamethrowers. Visitors with an eye more for relics of historical figures can see the buckskin coat worn by George Custer during the Indian Wars as well as Colin Powell’s fatigues worn during Operation Desert Storm.

The exhibit designers have tossed in a couple of documents here and there (most notably President Roosevelt’s first draft of his Pearl Harbor speech) and they have included an interactive “voices” stations where visitors can see short audiovisual displays with quotations from American citizens, combatants and noncombatants alike, about their wartime experiences. The exhibit also features nine short videos produced and donated by the History Channel.

The “Price of Freedom” exhibit has already generated some concern from among the Smithsonian staff, and undoubtedly it will continue to spark controversy within some historian circles and perhaps even the general public. Katherine Ott, Chair of the NMAH branch of the Smithsonian Congress of Scholars, has publicly taken issue with the exhibit for the way it addresses the current war in Iraq. “Treatment of current events without benefit of historical distance and analysis is a risky enterprise,” states Ott, and placing this display under the “Price of Freedom” title “presents a partisan view of the current war and is counter to our neutral public mission.” Director Glass disagrees, “It’s important for a history museum to show the connection between the present and the past . . . . students need to see something about current events as a gateway into history.”

The exhibit is also drawing criticism from the committee of historians the museum assembled to advise on the exhibit. The framework of the “Price of Freedom” concerned Northwestern’s Michael Sherry because it implies that freedom has always been the objective of American wars and that their “price” has been paid exclusively by Americans. Andrew Cayton, Miami University (of Ohio) expressed reservations because he believes, “wars are more complex than simply fights for freedom.” One member of the advisory committee even stated that the exhibit would make “a great recruitment exhibit.”

Others have expressed concerns about what is and is not emphasized. For example, the fight over slavery in Kansas in the 1850s gets almost as much display space as the Korean War. The ever-controversial subject of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan thus ending World War II is framed only from the military rationale for it. One Washington Post reviewer of the exhibition has also taken exception to the portrayal of the 1991 Persian Gulf War which he thinks comes off as “an ill-informed afterthought.”

In spite of the flag-waving title of the exhibition, the fact is that this exhibition is content and artifact rich and it does not hesitate to draw attention to some American military exploits that most historians today characterize as “shameful”&emdash;the “Trail of Tears” episode, for example.

Accolades and laurels to the NMAH staff for their largely successful effort to balance the vision and desires of the exhibition’s largest private funder&emdash;California businessman and philanthropist, Kenneth E. Behring&emdash;with their professionalism. That the new exhibit is generating controversy

and may draw fire from both the academic Left and Right is evidence that the leadership and staff at the NMAH are doing what they should be doing&emdash;challenging the visiting public to look deeper into their history. For more information on “The Price of Freedom” exhibit please visit: <http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/militaryhistory>.

–Bruce Craig

The State of Cultural History: A Conference Honoring Lawrence W. Levine will be held September 16-17, 2005, hosted by George Mason University. Lawrence Levine, who is also past president of the OAH, will be honored for his career as a teacher, scholar and public intellectual. Events include keynote addresses, new work, and agenda papers by leading cultural historians from across the country. The sessions will be held at the Arlington campus of GMU, which is conveniently located within walking distance of the Metro and also very near National Airport and Union Station.

Highlights of the conference include talks by Jean-Christophe Agnew, Geoff Eley, John Kasson, Lawrence Levine, Elaine Tyler May, Nell Irvin Painter, Kathy Peiss, Shane White, Deborah Willis and many others. Conference organizers seek to foster rigorous discussion on the current state of cultural history after the “cultural turn.” The desire is to trace the field’s late 20th-century rise and prior achievements while assessing its current diffusion, lingering blind spots, and future directions. Everyone attending the conference is also invited to a special dinner in honor of Professor Levine which will feature toasts by students, friends and colleagues.

The conference is free, but registration is required to guarantee a space and gain access to the conference papers. There is limited space at the celebratory dinner and in the conference hotels, so please sign up early. For more information, visit: <http://chnm.gmu.edu/levineconference>.